This application is a request for a Mentored Career Award for Faculty at Minority Institutions that will allow the candidate to develop a long-term research program concerned with the relationship between socio- economic distress (SED) associated with disadvantaged minority group membership and chronic kidney disease (CKD), a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD). The primary goal of this research project is to develop and elaborate a model specifying how distressing social and economic environments are associated with psychosocial, behavioral, and biomedical risk factors that impact the prevalence of CKD among African Americans. This project proposal outlines a plan of career development and intensive research activities that will leverage already completed doctoral level research and training in the social sciences. Substantive courses in addition to intense topical workshops and seminars will provide a structured means to strengthen five core competencies (i. e., epidemiology, biostatistics, ethics, leadership, and scientific presentation) that are necessary to establish a program of research investigating how non-traditional, non-biomedical factors and traditional biomedical risk factors independently and collectively impact CKD among an at-risk population. The research proposed in this application has three specific aims. The proposed project will: 1) examine the extent to which socio-economic distress or SED is associated with CKD among African Americans: 2) assess the degree to which potentially mediating mechanisms are independently and collectively associated with CKD among African Americans;and 3) determine the extent to which the relationship between SED and CKD is mediated by psychosocial, behavioral, and biomedical factors. The models associated with each aim will be assessed through an innovative analysis of data from the Jackson Heart Study (JHS). The JHS is a longitudinal, population-based study of CVD and related risk factors among African Americans in Mississippi - the state with the worst health profile in the nation. The resources at Meharry Medical College, Vanderbilt University, and the JHS provide a unique setting for a five year program of mentored research, education, and training that will build on the candidate's background in the social sciences to produce cutting-edge epidemiological research focusing on health disparities, CKD, and CVD. This research will incorporate information about the context in which African Americans live and work into empirical models specifying how non-traditional (as well as traditional) biomedical risk factors impact health outcomes;thereby informing health policy's effort to address and eliminate CKD and CVD disparities.